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An optical instrument is a device that processes light waves (or photons), either to enhance an image for viewing or to analyze and determine their characteristic properties. Common examples include periscopes , microscopes , telescopes , and cameras .
The most famous compound optical instruments in science are the microscope and the telescope which were both invented by the Dutch in the late 16th century. [110] Microscopes were first developed with just two lenses: an objective lens and an eyepiece. The objective lens is essentially a magnifying glass and was designed with a very small focal ...
Electronic instruments similar to the spherometer in design are used at inspection plants for casing, tubing, and drill pipe. The equivalent measurements in optics would be for a cylinder, or lens with a cylindrical component having an optical axis, where a plane through the lens would produce an oval circumference.
Originally, it was an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe distant objects – an optical telescope. Nowadays, the word "telescope" is defined as a wide range of instruments capable of detecting different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors.
Optoelectronic devices are electrical-to-optical or optical-to-electrical transducers, or instruments that use such devices in their operation. [ 1 ] Electro-optics is often erroneously used as a synonym, but is a wider branch of physics that concerns all interactions between light and electric fields , whether or not they form part of an ...
Military instruments as a class draw on most of the categories of instrument described throughout this article, such as navigation, astronomy, optics, and imaging, and the kinetics of moving objects. Common abstract themes that unite military instruments are seeing into the distance, seeing in the dark, knowing an object's geographic location ...
An image-forming optical system with aberration will produce an image which is not sharp. Makers of optical instruments need to correct optical systems to compensate for aberration. Aberrations are particularly impactful in telescopes, where they can significantly degrade the quality of observed celestial objects.
A polarimeter [1] is a scientific instrument used to measure optical rotation: the angle of rotation caused by passing linearly polarized light through an optically active substance. [ 2 ] Some chemical substances are optically active, and linearly polarized (uni-directional) light will rotate either to the left (counter-clockwise) or right ...